*Hey Wanderer photo of tornado damage in Nashville, TN, March 2020*

We had the idea to write this blog post after a major natural disaster hit the U.S. While no one we knew personally was affected, the whole experience was eye-opening. Living off grid has made us be more prepared for many situations because we supply our own utilities. If our electricity goes out, disaster or not, it’s fully on us to fix it. So by nature of off grid living, our lifestyle makes us more prepared than most. However with recent disasters we have been thinking deeply, “are we really prepared?”

Being prepared is more than having a list of supplies or a “bug out bag.” Although those things can be important. You need to think through a lot of different scenarios and know how you will need to use each supply. And while having one of something is better than nothing, to be truly prepared you need backups for your backups.

what non-disaster emergency situations are likely?

We also need to expand our mind to real life non-disaster scenarios that would cause us to need our emergency supplies. I think when a lot of people think about “preppers” they may think they are paranoid or that what they are preparing for may never happen. To be truly honest we’ve never fully aligned with the prepper community because it’s built on a lot of fear and worst case scenarios. But the reality is, there are plenty of REAL things to be prepared for like loss of electricity or even loss of a job or in our case (as pictured below) when we were still living in the city and our sewer pipe had to be ripped out and replaced.

The whole ordeal took about a week and we could not use any sinks, toilets, or showers. Luckily, we already had an on-demand water heater and could use that to shower in our backyard with a makeshift shower, but we had to travel daily somewhere to go to the bathroom. We ended up eating out a lot because we didn't have an easy way to wash dishes, and this meant we were spending a lot of extra money for food. A small composting toilet setup and a portable outdoor sink would’ve made our lives a lot easier during that week. Life during and after an emergency or natural disaster can be made a lot easier when you are even just a little prepared and in some cases can literally save your life.

What disasters are likely near you?

When you start the journey of being prepared it is easy to get overwhelmed. The easiest place to start is to think about the disasters or emergencies that are more likely to happen in your area. Does your area have a lot of wildfires, earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, etc? Consider the supplies you’ll need on hand to be prepared for each type of emergency, and also consider how you are going to store those supplies. Being prepared for no electricity due to an ice storm is pretty easy vs being prepared for an extreme flood. If all of your preparedness items get washed away, what is your plan? For a lot of emergency & disaster situations you will likely be staying put. But in some cases having a bag or tote that you can grab can make it easy to leave quickly and still have some supplies with you. This one blog post can’t lay out every possible scenario that you need to plan for but ultimately we want to help YOU decide the things you need to be better prepared.

DISCLAIMER: Every purchasable thing that we talk about in this post can be found on this page. Any product linked in this blog post is an affiliate link.

Water

Access to drinkable water is the most important thing to think about in a disaster. If water isn’t affected in your specific emergency situation, that is great! And one less thing you need to worry about. But when water lines are broken or contaminated, you’ll want a way to get or have water. Some folks choose to store actual water in jars or bottles and that’s not a bad idea for a short term emergency. But long term, you’ll want a way to purify your water and possibly even a way to gather water.

A collapsible rainwater tank is easy to store and then setup when you need it. You can put this at the bottom of a gutter downspout or just set it out when it rains. Of course, you need it to rain in this situation and if you live in a place where it may not be raining anytime soon, maybe you’d like to have a rainwater b a rrel always full just in case. Some people will fill up their bathtubs with water and to take it a step further you can buy one of these to put in your bath tub. You can also fill up water in one of these containers so you can have extra water on hand.

We used this water filter when we hiked part of the John Muir Trail and we loved it because you can filter small or larger amounts of water and it’s such a small filter. It's definitely the cheaper route to go and takes up the smallest amount of space. We now have a Berkey water filter that we filter all of our water through and they make it in a few sizes. Both of these things cannot be frozen or the filter will crack, so you will need to store either in a location that doesn’t freeze. Seriously… when we hiked the John Muir Trail, I had to sleep with the filter next to me in the sleeping bag to prevent it freezing so we weren’t without filtered water.

Food

In many instances your normal food source will still be okay to eat. But in the case that it is not, you may want to have some food stored in a safe location. Backpacker meals and freeze dried meals are easy to store and last for years and years. Some of our favorites while backpacking are Backpacker’s Pantry and Mountain House and there are some really good food and variety for both. I really love this biscuits and gravy meal and Casey loves this mango sticky rice. The problem with backpacking food is that when you are in the middle of the forest having hiked for days, almost anything tastes good. When you are used to home cooked food or restaurant food, a backpacking meal may come as a shock as ultimately it is freeze dried food. But in an emergency situation, it comes in handy and does the job. The good thing about these kinds of meals is that you only have to add boiling water and the cooking is done.

There are tons of other foods you can store like rice, beans, pasta, canned soups, etc, but some of these things you may want to store in something that is waterproof. A 5 gallon buckets with these twist off lids are really great to keep out critters and water while being easy to open. Some 5 gallon bucket lids are pretty hard to get off, but that also works if it’s all you can get.

If you want to be really involved in the food you are storing, you could grow a garden or buy produce and start preserving it by canning, dehydrating, freezing, and freeze drying. Our goal is to one day have enough food preserved for one year. Reaching this goal would mean that in an instance where we weren't able to leave our home due to collapsed roads, ice on the roads, etc. we would be able to eat food without needing to go to the store. And if somehow we were to stop being able to make money, i.e. lost a job, we would have a food source to get us through an uncertain time. This is definitely a big project to take on if you’ve never preserved before, which is why it’s definitely okay to start out with store-bought food.

Cooking

So you have food, but your electricity is out and now you need a way to cook it. Having something like a camp stove would come in handy. There are plenty of things that can be cooked without electricity, and you may even have something in your backyard already- like a grill. If you do have a grill, maybe spend some time cooking things other than meats on there so you are confident in your grill cooking during an emergency. For example, I have definitely baked cupcakes, cookies, and even a cake on the grill. Obviously if you have a grill that operates on propane, you will need to have access to propane so keeping a full tank or multiple is important.

If you don’t have a grill, you can buy something as small as this ultralight camping stove or as big as a multi-purpose Blackstone. You can also use a basic charcoal grill (buy you also need to keep charcoal on hand) or a rocket stove or cowboy grill that just use plain wood. There are off grid cooking options at almost any price point and size.

Power

I think losing power may be the biggest widespread most common problem we all have and will face. And it’s kind of a big deal. Depending on the time of year you could be looking at needing a way to heat as well as keep your refrigerated and frozen foods safe. There are a few different ways to deal with this and it really depends on how much money you want to spend. Ultimately you will need something to run power for you.

This could look like getting a small portable power station that you always keep charged and can charge small electronics like your phone, internet, and batteries. This route is actually a little bit more expensive in ratio to how much power it can provide for you than if you were to do something like buy a portable generator. A power station won’t require fuel and takes up much less space, but will need a way to be re-charged if you are without power for days. You can buy power stations that are much larger and can run a 30 AMP plug, but they are going to be very pricey. Most power stations will charge with solar panels and there are definitely solar panel options that plug directly into the power station to make it really simple. This is actually something we used a lot in the beginning of our off grid journey because it’s something we already had. If you are interested in learning more about portable power stations and which one is right for you, read this post.

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You can get a fuel powered generator that has a good amount of power for around $400, but you can certainly buy them for much more. It all depends on your budget and living situation. The problem with fuel powered generators is that they have to run outside, they take up a lot of space, and you have to keep fuel on hand in order to run them when you need it. If you are interested in buying a generator, check out this post where I go in depth about all things portable generators.

Of course, if you want a bigger project, you could install a small solar system that is always collecting energy from the sun and storing in a battery bank system. This doesn’t have to be something huge or that runs your whole house. Even setting up two $70 panels can do wonders when you have no electricity. When first living off grid we had this portable power bank and two solar panels set up outside to power in and then we had a dual fuel generator. We used the generator when we needed a lot of power. For instance some nights we would turn on the electric heater in our camper for a couple hours while we ate dinner and hung out before bed. We could not have run that on our solar generator.

The other option is to get a whole house generator professionally installed. I’ve been trying to convince my parents to get one of these for years because their electricity goes out a few times a year. Regardless of what option you choose, everyone should have a generator of some sort. In an ideal situation, you would have a different types, but one is better than none.

Lighting

Without electricity, you’ll likely have a lighting problem. Even if you have a generator or backup for losing power, you need to have ways to provide light that don’t require electricity. There are plenty of off grid options and one of our favorite things that we have that we still use every single day are head lamps. To me, these are a million times better than flashlights as they are hands free and shine wherever you look. Of course if you are keeping a head lamp for emergencies, you will need to keep batteries on hand as well. Because we are off grid, we keep a battery daddy that is pretty full at all times. This is simply because we use them for a lot of things and don’t want to be in a situation where we need them and don’t have them. You can never have too many batteries!

Another thing you could have is an oil lamp. You can get these at any antique store for not much money at all, but you can also buy them brand new. They run for a very long time on not much oil and the oil is not overly expensive. You can get them where the flame is more enclosed with a handle so you can easily move it around and take it outside, but there are also ones that are better to sit on a table and light up a room.

Rechargeable lamps can be an option as well if you will have even a small amount of electricity to keep recharging them. And of course, candles make great off grid lighting- just make sure you have a lighter!

Communication

If you have cell phone service during an emergency situation, then being able to have access to a way to communicate to others is as simple as making sure you can charge your cell phone. But if that is not the case, you will want a way to connect or hear from the outside world. This can be as simple have a weather radio that can alert you of weather conditions and can be used as a AM/FM radio so you can listen for local updates. The one we have can operate by batteries, by cranking it to charge the batteries, or a tiny solar panel on top of it to charge it.

If you want to have a way to communicate outside of a cell phone, you could get a satellite phone or satellite internet. We have this Garmin satellite communicator (this is the updated version of the one we have) that we used while hiking the John Muir Trail and it was the only way we were able to communicate to our families that we were okay. It of course also had an SOS button in case we were in an emergency and when activated they can alert the nearest rescuers to your location. It was easy to use and provided us with all the communication we needed on trail- you can even request weather updates! The only problem with both of these options is that you have to have a subscription to be able to use the satellite service.

Having a set of walkie talkies would be good for more local communication. You could even go in on set of them with your neighbors so you have a way to communicate without cell phone. If you don’t already know your neighbors well, that is something you should spend some time focusing on as in a time of need, those are the people who will be in it with you. Plus, neighbors can be really awesome! It just takes a little work.

ShoweR/Hygiene

For quick cleanups, it is pretty easy and cheap to keep some baby wipes on hand. Hand sanitizer is great too in combination with the baby wipes for dirty hands. There are popup sinks you can use in a pinch if you need more of a setup for washing hands and dishes, but a bucket will also do.

But there are also some things you could have that could make rigging up a shower easier. A small outdoor on-demand water heater can be attached to a water hose and provide you immediately with a hot shower. You of course would need propane on hand to fuel. If your home water isn’t working but you have a source of water like a collection of rainwater, you could get a small transfer pump that you could use to pump water out of that water source or even a 5 gallon bucket. That’s exactly what we did when we first lived on our land and had no bathroom and it really worked out just fine.

We also have a popup shower tent that instantly creates privacy and the good thing about those is they fold down so they don’t take up much space at all. There are also simple camp showers like these that are inexpensive and will help you wash off in a pinch. We recently got this little thing and have used it for many things- it can be used for a shower, watering your gardening, rinsing off your dog, doing dishes, etc.

Toilet

When you gotta go, you gotta go. If you live on your own land and not necessarily in a city, you can go in the trees, squat, and do #1 easily. If you are in the city, this would be okay 1 or 2 times, but if you have a group of people peeing all over your backyard, it is going to smell really bad. But in a serious disaster you may not care about things like bad smells.

For going #2 the simplest thing you can do is dig a hole in the ground and squat over it and go and bury your poo. You wouldn’t want to do this for long and really should only be used for extreme emergencies. There are a lot of rules for good practice of pooping in nature, like having to do go a certain distance away from any water sources. You’d be better off going in a compostable bag and tying it up really well and having a place for all the bags to go. They even sell portable toilets that can make this process much easier. Some people might just use a 5 gallon bucket and attach a toilet seat. That’s a pretty cheap and practical option.

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If you need a more long term solution to having a toilet, but you still don’t have water or a regular toilet, you could build your own composting toilet. They do sell composting toilets but they are rather expensive especially when you are only getting it for emergencies. Like I talked about earlier, this is a real problem we once had when we lived in the city. We couldn’t use our toilets or sinks or showers. Looking back I wish we had a backup composting toilet, or even the thought to DIY one the day we realized we were about to not have a toilet for a week. At that time we just didn’t really know about composting toilets like we do now. We certainly had the space to store one. Composting toilets are not ideal to most people, but I’ve used one for 3 years now and I’d much rather have a composting toilet than nothing. You can check out this blog post here for more info on composting toilets.

Shelter

In a dire situation where your home is completely damaged, you might need an emergency shelter. With shelter you are thinking about staying out of the elements, staying warm, and staying dry. If you are unable to get to a location set up for displaced people or you have nowhere to go, you would need shelter to set up right on your land, or somewhere nearby. A tent would be the easiest & quickest way to have shelter. There are more expensive lightweight tents (this is the one we used hiking the JMT) that are easy to throw in a bag and take with you, but there are also less expensive tents (we enjoy this one for car camping) that are much heavier and sleep more people.

Having to setup your own shelter in an emergency is the worst possible situation, but having a tent ready could make that situation a little more bearable. You should also find out what churches nearby or public places that may house people in an emergency. For example there is a church close to us where we can go when there is a tornado warning.

In a less extreme situation, you may want a pop-up canopy that can become your cooking station when needing to cook with outside. Our first week or so on our property we set up and outdoor kitchen under a pop-up canopy. We will also use one in the middle of summer to work on projects outside as place to take cover from the sun. If your electricity goes out and it’s the middle of summer, being outside under cover may be cooler than in your home.

Heating

If you find yourself without power in a colder season, you will need a way to keep warm. A great solution for heat when you don’t have electricity is a portable propane heater. They aren’t too expensive and can go inside wherever you need them. You can also have multiple for different parts of the house and they come in different sizes. You can buy a different hose that lets you hook up the heater to a standard propane tank that you use for a grill or you can buy the smaller handheld tanks. Another route you can go is getting a larger permanent propane heater installed in your home. Many years ago I lived in a house where the previous owners had one of those propane heaters installed after their electricity had gone out and they were without heat. There are also diesel & kerosene heaters. These provide more of a dry heat than propane, and you can get a diesel heater permanently installed. We actually just bought this diesel heater for our storage shed where our solar batteries are stored.

We heat mainly with our wood stove and that route is certainly a possibility. Some people will install wood stoves as supplemental heat or as a back up in case of emergencies. Depending on where you live you will have to look into codes to see if you can have one installed and the regulations for how it is installed. We love our wood stove and are grateful to have it, but we also have a portable propane heater and a mini split unit that can be used for heating when we need it.

A cheaper more in-a-pinch route would be to make sure you have some hot hands on hand. We used hot hands during our first winter off grid because we lived in our home when we didn’t have insulation installed yet. Hot hands can warm your extremities and do the bare minimum for warming you up. They also have larger ones that have more surface area. They may even work just fine if you just need a little warmth and it isn’t extremely cold outside. It’s never a bad idea to have multiple options.

Laundry

In an emergency situation, laundry is likely the last thing you are thinking about. But if for some reason the emergency lasts longer than a few days or your clothing is wet from flooding, you are probably going to want to do laundry at some point. You can definitely have a smaller portable washer that can do a very small amount of laundry if you really don’t have the electricity to spend on washing a full load. You will likely want to hang dry your clothing.

In some ways I actually like hang drying clothes better because they seem so fresh when they are dry. Don’t get me wrong, I still LOVE having a dryer. But the power that most normal sized dryers take is A LOT of power. You likely aren’t going to want to use your finite power in that way. So having a way to easily setup a clothesline outside or even inside your home could be very helpful. Check out our blog post on how to set up a clothesline. Having a clothesline is great even under normal circumstances. They are much more gentler on your clothes and will save you money on your electricity bill.

If you don’t even have the power to use your washer, hand washing is always an option. There are a few different things you can use depending on your preference. A standard washboard can work great in a pinch. If you really want to invest in your off grid laundry setup, you can even get a wringer that will do that part for you.

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Medicine

As you may know, Casey has Type 1 diabetes, which means she has to keep a lot of supplies and medicines in stock to have on hand at any moment. Trying to be prepared for disaster means that she needs to have a certain amount of insulin here at the house at all times. This is actually pretty hard with insurance because you can’t just buy as much as you want. But it is very important for her to make sure she is refilling her prescription in plenty of time before she actually needs it. Even if you don’t have a medical condition, you may want to stock things like pain reliever and a basic first aid kit. There are even more in depth medical kits you can get that have supplies for more serious injuries. You can even take basic emergency medical courses in person or online to be better prepared for those types of situations.

TOOLS

Having a chainsaw and knowing how to use it can be really helpful in certain weather emergencies. Trees can fall and block roads and driveways in severe thunderstorms, tornadoes, hurricanes, and even when a tree is just old. Having the skill of being able to cut up a fallen tree safely is a good one to have. Our favorite chainsaws are battery operated because they are strong enough to cut through trees but also don’t require the maintenance gas chainsaws have. We love having this smaller chainsaw but for clearing trees you’ll need something with a longer bar. As a side note- in general we are big fans of battery operated equipment largely because we can power it for free with our solar power system and because it requires significantly less maintenance. If you are looking to make that switch, find a brand you like and that offers a multitude of tools that work with the same battery system. You will save a lot of money on batteries if you can use a few between multiple tools.

Also, for storm cleanup having work gloves is a good and safe practice. There are plenty of tools that could be helpful in an emergency, but which ones are pretty dependent on your location and situation. I think whatever tools you choose to have on hand you should know how to use and that’s the best preparation you can have.

PETS/ LIVESTOCK

If you are like us, your pets are like family. And even if you are raising animals for food, you still want the best for them. So it is important to keep extra food on hand to take care of them and to consider them in your emergency preparedness plans. If you have to leave them, don’t leave them tied up or locked up. They will do what they can to survive but if they are restrained they are limited in what they can do. If you leave your property in a crisis and you plan to go back for you pet/animals, go ahead and take them if you can. You may not be able to get back to them. Each animal situation is different, but the important thing is to consider them in your emergency preparedness plan.

GAS/ PROPANE/ FUEL

Make sure you have enough fuel for your generator for at least a few days. You can buy multiple gas cans to store the gas. In terms of storing gasoline, there are fuel stabilizers you can use so your gas stays usable for longer periods of time. However, it doesn’t store for years that way. My preferred fuel to keep on hand is propane because you can store it indefinitely. There are certainly pros and cons to both. For example, propane tanks can freeze in cold temperatures and high humidity. The propane tanks will unfreeze and will be useable again, but it can be frustrating in the moment. We handle this problem by keeping many tanks on hand so we can switch them out as necessary.

You also want to make sure your car is fueled up. If there is any threat of bad weather coming your way, use it as reminder to go fill up your gas tank in your car. I used to be really bad about driving around on nearly empty, but now that we don’t live that close to a gas station, I have to be much more mindful about that. I now try to be in the habit of not letting my gas tank get below half empty. If you had to evacuate quickly, how terrible would it be if your car was on empty?

Another thing to keep on hand is engine oil for your generators, etc. Make sure you have the kind for colder weather as well as warmer weather. If you haven’t had to run your generator since summer and now it’s really cold outside, you will want to change the oil out to the winter version. If you don’t, your generator just may not start.

And one other oil to have on hand is bar & chain oil for your chainsaw.

If you have a camp stove that runs on butane, you will want to have a few cans of that in stock. We buy these in 12 packs and that lasts for many cooking sessions.

MISC

You will likely want some sort of storage containers to keep all of your prepared things together and safe. If you are storing food you will want containers that are rodent proof and water proof to store the food in. If you want an option to pack some of your items and take them on the go, you may want a backpacking backpack ( I have linked the one that we have & really like. This brand is well-trusted & makes high quality products) that carries a lot and is easy to handle. Waterproof bags are good to have to quickly throw things in that you want to keep dry and would be helpful in a flooding type of emergency.

are you ready to be prepared?

When trying to be prepared for emergencies and disasters there is a lot to consider. While I tried to think of everything you might need, this list is certainly not exhaustive. As previously mentioned you really need to think about your specific circumstances and what disasters/emergencies are most likely to happen where you live. Start preparing for those things and then have backups ready as well. The idea is that you need to think through different disasters/emergencies so you know you have a plan and what your options are.

There’s a saying in the off grid/homestead/preparedness world: 3 is 2, 2 is 1, 1 is none. If we have 3 ways to heat, we really only have 2 if something goes wrong. And it’s all just another way to say that redundancy is key. Emergencies happen everyday whether they are unserious like a clogged sewer pipe or more serious like a tornado or flooding. If you are able, it is always good to have multiple things ready and in place in case something unexpected happens.

While we have linked to items that we think could be helpful, don’t forget to check places like Facebook Marketplace, eBay, Craigslist, etc. Don’t go broke trying to be prepared. People sell used tools and a lot of things on this list for considerably less than buying these items new. We have bought various tools and generators used. Make sure you see the item in use before deciding to buy something used. It can be overwhelming to try to get all of these items together, but just start somewhere. Don’t let your overwhelm paralyze you.

I hope this helps, but definitely check out some other posts we’ve linked to in this post that could help you understand each subject a little further.

Everything you need to be prepared for emergencies and natural disasters